Lee's Summit youths honor terror victims

Ten young people from First Baptist Church in Lee's Summit teamed with youth minister Richard Caldwell to participate in an 11-On-11 Project on Saturday, Sept. 11. The team was part of a larger group of young people from 11 states who dedicated the day to service projects to honor victims of World Trade Center and Pentagon terrorist attacks on that date in 2001.

Current, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship's young leaders network, organized the multi-state project and involved Lee's Summit students from eighth-grade through high school seniors.

The Missourians teamed with Celebrate Sacrifice, a Sept. 11 event sponsored by New Summit Presbyterian Church to honor first responders. The young people spent two and a half hours pulling 500 pounds of pork to feed those in attendance.

"When we were done, our group wanted to do more, but there was nothing for us to do," Caldwell said. "They assigned our group this specific task because they thought it would take us the duration of our time there to do, which was four hours."

First Baptist became interested in 11-On-11 after Caldwell was contacted by friend and mission project coordinator Carol McEntyre. "She also asked me if I would like to be the state spokesman for Missouri, which basically meant that I would help to generate publicity for 11-On-11 in Missouri, as well as answer people's questions that might want to get involved," Caldwell said.

Other states involved in the project were Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

"Our idea was to try and do something constructive on a day that is remembered as destructive," McEntyre said. "We want to promote world peace, by spreading God's love in our own community."

While each group chose their own service project, they each had a time of prayer before and after the event and read a peace litany written by McEntyre.

The FBC team was able to see the effects of their work.

"Upon our completion of the task, several people, including pastor Dave Moore, expressed their gratitude of our coming out and the support of a local church," Caldwell said. "They seemed to be genuinely touched; two of them had tears in their eyes."